International flight connection? Beware starting with a short hop


International nonstops flights are great, but they aren’t available to most destinations. When planning travel, many travelers go for the shortest total time, however, the connection point can often be a more important factor.

My rule of thumb — given a choice, take an available long-haul flight first, then the puddle-jumper. For example, with a trip to Europe, fly to the European gateway, then take the short haul flight as opposed to a short flight within the United States and then a nonstop.
This way, a missed connection at least means being closer to the final destination. Even more importantly, long-haul and international flights are much less likely to be delayed.
This post’s nightmare example is brought to you courtesy of Continental and their Newark hub:
My United Global Services client booked a two-hour connection on Continental from Washington National Airport via Newark to Delhi, India. (Yes, I had already suggested Frankfurt because of this very issue.) But, the National flight times were good, and it is a much more convenient airport when flying from central D.C.
All looked fine until he checked the flight online before calling a cab for the airport. And found the DCA-JFK flight was canceled. He immediately called Global Services who reached Continental for him. The agent rebooked him on a 4:49 p.m. flight from Baltimore, neglecting to mention that that second flight was over an hour late.
A little side note, the Continental agent who rebooked him from Baltimore told him “Oh we called your travel agent.” (They didn’t.) Although when I called Continental to ask “WHEN exactly did someone say they called, the agent said, oh no, we sent him an email message through Trip-Alert. (They didn’t do that either.)
Now, this was a particularly bad day for thunderstorms back East. Washington, D.C., the New York area airports and Boston especially But a lot of days in the summer are bad days for thunderstorms, especially on the east coast and in Chicago.
Sometimes an airport is completely shut and it doesn’t matter what you do. But often weather just causes delays and scattered cancellations And the short-haul flights suffer first.
For example, flights from the D.C. area or Boston to and from Newark were often more than 4 hours late or canceled. While international flights were mostly on-time and cross-country domestic flights were on-time or nearly so.
As it turned out, my client made it to the DCA airport before 4 p.m. the 4:49 p.m. flight was even further delayed. When he called me, I told him the 1:55 p.m. flight was still on the ground. After nearly an hour in a slow line it was STILL on the ground. So when he asked he was able to get a seat on that plane.
That flight finally left about 6p, and he made the connection. Although his scheduled 4:49 p.m. flight didn’t leave until after 9 p.m. — after the Delhi flight had left Newark.
Curiously enough, the last message I got from the client was from the plane, which had six empty seats on a previously sold-out business class flight. Which meant that at least six people, maybe more, due to upgrades, probably missed their connections.
Now, most of the time, flight booked using legal connecting times work. But, “most of the time” isn’t much help when you’re one of the exceptions to the rule.
Whatever airlines will say about trying to prioritize international passengers, especially in business and first class, that prioritizing doesn’t include holding long-haul flights for domestic connections. (In fact this same client had a problem last month with a DCA to JFK flight that was connecting to a flight to Sao Paolo. He missed the flight.)
Moreover, as mentioned earlier, end up in Frankfurt or London with a destination in Europe, or anywhere on the same continent as your final destination and it’s a relatively fixable problem.
Remember before booking flights, long-haul international flights often go once or at most twice a day, so a five-minute mixed connection may become a nearly 24-hour layover.

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